John Mahama declines to confirm flagbearership

Former President John Dramani Mahama has once again declined to state whether he intends to vie for the fiagbearership of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the 2020 general election.

According to him, his focus at the moment is on contributing towards the party’s restructuring and healing process to make the NDC a stronger force in the elections.

Some supporters of Mr. Mahama, who was defeated in the last election, have consistently urged him to declare his intentions ahead of the next polls.

Meanwhile, five NDC stalwarts have declared their readiness to lead the party into the polls, including Second Deputy Speaker and MP for Nadowli-Kaleo, Alban Bagbin, Dr. Spio-Garbrah, former minister of trade and industry, education, and communications; Mr Sylvester Mensah, former Chief Executive of the National Health Insurance Authority; Professor Joshua Alabi, former MP for La-Dadekotopon and Nii Amasah Namoale.

Speaking to NDC supporters in London, Mr. Mahama said he will soon make his intentions known.

“There are many who have declared their intention to run when the nominations are opened. I have been focusing on the reorganisation and so I have not made any intentions and I said rightly that if I declare that I will run or I would not run it will have implications for the reorganisation.

If I say I would not run, then it means that the number of people who will intensify their activity to become the presidential candidates would increase in tempo.”

“If I say I will run, then it will also have implications on the reorganisation exercise because then the focus will be the fact that I say I want to run so that is why I’m doing the things I want to do.

As the immediate past leader who led the party into the elections of 2016 and we lost, I have a responsibility to make sure that the party is put back on its feet so that whoever leads it has a very good chance of taking us into victory. And that is my focus at the moment,” he added.

The ten regional chairmen of the NDC, in November 2017, backed the candidature of John Mahama for election 2020, even without the latter announcing his intention to contest.

The ten chairmen after a meeting issued a communique in which they urged the former President to consider running for the 2020 polls.

Meanwhile, a survey conducted by the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana has revealed that 58 per cent of voters believed that Mr. Mahama, will lead the NDC in the 2020 elections.

Head of the Political Science Department, Dr. Bossman Asare, who made this revelation while presenting the survey findings, said: “We wanted to find out who the voters think should lead the NDC in 2020, and overwhelmingly 58 per cent of the candidates we interviewed said they believed Mr. Mahama will become the candidate.”